Title: Where the Bears Sleep
Formats: Print and eBook
Genre: Folklore & Fantasy
Pages: n/a
Reading Age: 10 to 18+
Language: English
Release Date: March 2026
Available here: Amazon
Story Summary :
In the harsh, beautiful wilderness of Finland, an orphan named Mikko carries “the claw” – a physical reminder of the night a beast took his family. Gifted with the strange ability to speak to animals, Mikko finds himself in an uneasy alliance with a rabbit and a massive, scarred bear on a journey toward the mountain where the bears sleep. This tale asks whether nature must be our master, or if we can find family in the very shadows we have spent our lives fearing.
What This Story Means To Me:
This story was a difficult one to write. But not for the obvious reasons. I still have my parents, so it didn’t begin with loss in that sense. It started more with Mikko, and with something from my own childhood. The feeling of being different. Not in the same way as him, but enough that it was a thing in my life.
I moved to the capital at 19 with no money and no real connections. No clear direction. Just a sense that I had to try and find out who I was supposed to be. There are parts of that time that still sit close to me, and some of them I’m not ready to put into words. A line in the story, “nature need not be your master,” is something I still find myself wrestling with. And there are things from before all of this as well, things I don’t yet have the words for.
But the idea of family in this story is true. Along the way, a close friend stood by me while I was trying to figure things out. He became something more than a friend. Someone I could rely on, and still can. Someone who felt like family, even when I didn’t quite know where I belonged.
If you’ve read some of the other notes, you’ll know I tend to draw from my own experiences. This story is no exception. This story carries some of me in it. Parts of my journey, and things I’ve lived through, not told as they were, but changed and made larger inside a world of magic.